Before I start, I have to admit something. I’m only telling you this because I think that it is important. But I swear, what happened was real. I just hope that you don’t judge me based on what I’m about to share. The thing is, I live in a mental institution. I am clinically insane….
I had always wondered what the bottom of a lake looked like, and now I know. It looks like the sun setting over the horizon, where the farthest depths of sky are black, but you can see a kind of layered improvement in the light the farther along you get. I wouldn’t be able to…
Back in college, I had a small one-bedroom apartment all to myself on the ground floor of a multi-building complex. The location was great. The complex stood at the end of a rural street seldom visited by cars, nestled in the woods near a large pond. Tributary streams snaked around the complex, and the soothing…
Scotland is one of those places that seems to never really be simple, or summed up neatly into a couple of words. Sure, you can try, the tourists certainly do: tartan, booze and heavy accents; but I’ve lived here all my life, never worn tartan nor drunk (although I suppose my accent is fairly thick)….
We are all too familiar with creepy basements. We all know the feeling you get when you turn the lights off before running up the stairs, praying nothing will grab your ankle before the last step. As children, we would dread trips to the cellar, the cold room, and that cramped, dusty smelling spot under…
Thank you all for coming here today on such short notice. It’s very kind of you, and I wish I had something better to say to you all, or at least something that won’t sound so crazy and so, uh, creepy. But it is what it is, and what it is, is something I have…
The room was dark and empty, a spare room that I hadn’t had the chance to do anything with. The electricity had gone out sometime earlier that night, so I had no way to tell time and no source of light except for the flashlight in my hand, my lighter, and the candle I had…
I woke up to the all-too familiar beeping of my alarm clock on my night table. I made the mistake of staying up till 4:00am the night before, so the only thing in the world that I wanted was to just stay in bed and sleep. But it was a school day. The weekend was…
You were excited for this day. You should be after all, you’ve been working hard. You deserve to have some fun. For tonight, you planned a movie night with a couple of old friends. Horror movies, as was customary since your younger days. You all watched with wide eyes and shaking hands, while cracking jokes…
“Have you ever heard of The Sallow Man?”, That’s what Timmy Morrison asked me in seventh grade. Timmy was my best friend. We did nearly everything together. It was Friday, and we were sitting in lunch period discussing what we were going to do when he came over to stay the night after school. “No,…
Things have simply not been the same for Dalton Whitworth since the carriage accident. Colors are not as vivid – music not nearly as pleasurable. Every meal he consumes is bland and leaves an unsavory aftertaste. Days filled with sunlight are no longer warm, enjoyable experiences. On the contrary – he finds the light to…
In the winter of 1998, there was an undocumented wave of brutal murders that nearly wiped out the entire population of a small fishing village in Argentina. All evidence of the incident was swiftly swept under the rug by the local authorities, which then proceeded to set up massive roadblocks around Tamacun, preventing anyone from…
Coming from the Appalachian foothills of West Virginia, where driving to town was a big to-do, I realized at a young age that people tend to lean toward the supernatural for things that they cannot understand. The women in my family were particularly guilty of this kind of superstition – the kind that only festers…
In the sleepy town of Windarm, a street where no one goes, a child of wondrous prying was deadened in crooked pose. His name was Samuel Craven a boy no older than ten, sneaking out from the safety of his home, a reluctant one then. The breeze of the night engulfed him as he ran…
In high school I had a few peculiar jobs, I did things from measuring the depth of a local lake to cleaning out and sorting trash, but one job stood out to me the most. During the summer of my senior year of high school I took up a job as a receptionist at our…
Ever since I was young, I have lived thinking in numbers. I was brilliant with numbers, so that was what I stuck to doing. I excelled in my math classes all throughout my childhood, so much so that many of my math teachers gave me advanced lessons to keep me on my toes. But it…
I’ve always been a night person. Even as a small child, I can still remember my stepmother affectionately referring to me as ‘her little night owl’ when she’d wake up to use the bathroom and find light pouring out from beneath my doorframe. This natural tendency towards the nocturnal wasn’t particularly enjoyable during the school…
Perhaps you remember it. Perhaps you don’t. Either way it doesn’t matter. After all, I do. In the winter of 2011-12 there was a string of people who disappeared without a trace on Newfoundland Island. They all lived in remote groups of about 20 people, barely qualifying as villages. They had all gone outside in…
Driving home at night, you notice that all the lights in your house/apartment are on. As you park the car, they all turn off at the same time. The house is empty and the doors are locked from the inside. You check your watch. The big hand is on the 4, the little hand is…
Hope didn’t like being home without her parents. All of her friends did, and they had all shared wild tales of what exactly they had done when their parents were gone. They all seemed to get a sense of satisfaction at disobeying their parents and defying their rules. Hope didn’t have a rebellious streak. It…
If you wait at any given train station on a certain date, a train will appear that isn’t on any schedule. If you board the train you will find that the interior, regardless of the battered exterior, will be very elegant and old fashioned. Have a seat and enjoy the train ride. The steam engine…
“In recent weeks, a rash of murders has swept the city. Police are calling it the work of a serial killer, but when questioned about this statement, Police Spokesman Daniel Garfield refused to comment. All authorities will say at the moment, is that each victim received a voicemail minutes before they were killed, saying, quote,…
The eerie house on the corner of the street isn't a place where I'd ever consider going. However, as the downpour that begun seconds ago intensifies I make a short sprint for the verandah of the creepy residence. I look down the street, shivering a little because of the unpleasant temperature that’s come down with…
They were on their hands and knees staring into the large gash in the ground. Mallory gripped the loose gravel at the lip of the hole under his calloused fingers, and his nose flared up from the rolls of dust cascading up his snot sloshing nostrils. Charcoal caked their faces. Benjamin’s was blacker than the…